Over 40% of radio listening in the United States takes place in mobile vehicles, the most popular location for receiving radio broadcasts. Emerging standards and advances in digital technology are leading to increased radio services for vehicles from sources including satellite radio, terrestrial digital radio, cellular phone services and other wireless communication systems, added to the services of long-standing and well-established amplitude modulation (AM), frequency modulation (FM) radio technologies and television broadcasts.
New wireless Internet, multimedia and telematics applications are converging in new automobile design, with the expectation that nearly 50% of new cars by year 2006 will have telematics capabilities, many with global positioning systems.
Of particular importance to radio broadcasters and wireless communication services is their ability to provide good signal reception to vehicles and fixed locations within their broadcast area. Unfortunately, these service providers are often limited in their ability to test actual radio reception, which typically requires transporting portable test equipment around the local area of a broadcast station to take signal-strength measurements.
In recent years, companies providing telematics and other communication services to mobile vehicles have been focused on providing comprehensive radio and wireless communication coverage. Radio reception has been poor in some geographical areas, but broadcasters and other communication service providers have had no efficient or cost-effective way to detect areas of low or poor radio reception. What is needed is a system and method that can use the current infrastructure of vehicle communications equipment to detect problem areas of broadcast and two-way wireless communication systems. With this information, service providers could improve radio broadcast and wireless communication coverage by planning transmitter positions, output power and other system parameters based on many thousands of signal strength measurements taken on an ongoing basis, rather than on periodic measurements taken with portable test equipment.
It is an object of this invention, therefore, to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described above, as well as to provide a more comprehensive, accurate and efficient method and system for determining a signal strength of a select radio frequency received at a mobile vehicle, using currently available radio and wireless communication devices.